A new independent report released Monday asserts that it will take between $1.5 billion and $2.7 billion over five years to stand up some variation of a separate military branch dedicated to space, assuming the intelligence community is not included.

Three potential scenarios for a new space-related military branch are laid out in the report, titled, “How Much Will the Space Force Cost?” and written by Todd Harrison, director of the Aerospace Security Project and defense budget analyst at the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The most inexpensive option included is a Space Corps that is part of the Air Force, as has been championed by Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee’s strategic forces subcommittee. It would require about 1,700 additional personnel for headquarters staff and other positions, and cost about about $11.3 billion per year in fiscal year 2019 dollars, including $0.3 billion in new funding, the report said.

“Space Force-Lite” would be a “limited but independent” department that includes all Air Force space assets, plus the Army 1st Space Brigade, the Navy Program Executive Office Space Systems and the Navy Satellite Operations Center -- all housed at their current facilities -- and an additional 2,600 personnel for a total annual cost of $13.4 billion, with $0.4 billion in new funding.

The third option, dubbed “Space Force-Heavy,” would include all of Space Force-Lite, plus the Army’s 100th Missile Defense Brigade, a small contingent of personnel working on satellite communications at the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) and part of the Missile Defense Agency portfolio related to space situational awareness technologies and mid-course intercept capabilities. An additional 3,100 personnel would be required, per the report, and this iteration could cost around $21.5 billion per year, with $0.5 billion in new funding.

Each scenario factors in the cost of required military and civilian personnel, military construction fees, research and development and procurement funding, recruitment and training costs, operations and maintenance fees, and headquarters/secretariat staff costs.

Assuming that the majority of any new Space Force budget will be pulled from existing space programs and operations within DoD, the new department could cost between $1.5 billion to $2.7 billion in new funding over the next five years, Harrison said.

That number is much smaller than the projected cost laid out by the Air Force in a reported memo in September, which claimed it would cost the Pentagon $13 billion over the next five years to stand up a new Space Force, along with the new U.S. Space Command and Space Development Agency (SDA).

Harrison noted in a Monday briefing with reporters at CSIS that his budget forecast does not include funds to set up a new combatant command or the SDA, nor does it factor in the cost of potentially including intelligence agencies such as the National Reconnaissance Office, as its budget numbers are classified. Adding the NRO portfolio to the Space Force and other IC capabilities would certainly increase the funding levels, he added.

To compare to current branch statistics, the Space Force-Heavy version is about the size of the Coast Guard in terms of workforce, but the funding would be nearly double that dedicated to the Coast Guard, Harrison said.

The Pentagon is expected to release its legislative proposal to Congress in February, the details of which remain unknown. But it’s likely the Pentagon’s proposal will fit somewhere between Space Force-Lite and Space Force-Heavy, he said. Last week, Deputy Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan told reporters the cost is likely to come in under $10 billion per year, and could possibly be “less than five” billion dollars. (Defense Daily, Nov. 13)

Based on his assessment, the cost to stand up a new branch is equivalent to “a handful of F-35s,” Harrison told reporters. It’s unlikely that the budget numbers will ultimately be cause of much concern to lawmakers, who will have to decide “if and when” to create a Space Force based on the mission need they perceive, he added.

Whether Congress votes to stand up a sixth military branch dedicated to space is “a coin toss” at this point, Harrison said, and it will be up to senior DoD leadership to sell it as a needed change supported by the department, rather than just “Trump’s Space Force,” he said.

The State Department has approved a $320 million deal with the NATO Support and Procurement Agency to deliver precision guided munitions kits for select partner nations, as well as $624 million in missile deals with Japan.

The Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) notified Congress of the three separate foreign military sales on Nov. 16.

Under the NATO deal, 12 partners nations and Finald will receive new munitions kits and detector sensing units.

“This proposed sale supports the foreign policy and national security of the United States by increasing the flexibility of Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain and the United Kingdom - 12 NATO nations and one Partnership for Peace nation - to contribute to overseas contingency operations,” DSCA officials said in a statement.

Boeing [BA] and Raytheon [RTN] Missile Systems are the prime contractors for the deal.

The State Department also approved two deals with Japan, including $561 million for SM-3 missiles and $63 million for Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missiles.

The SM-3 sale includes eight Block 1B missiles and 13 Block 2A missiles, as well as Mk-21 and Mk-29 missile canisters.

Raytheon Missile Systems is the prime contractor for the missiles and BAE Systems will deliver the canisters.

Under the latter deal, Japan will receive 32 of Raytheon’s AIM-120C-7 AMRAAM missiles.

“The proposed sale of these missiles will provide Japan a critical air defense capability to assist in defending the Japanese homeland and U.S. personnel stationed there,” DSCA officials said in a statement.

The U.S. military, defense contractors, government agencies, think tanks, the media and others are being targeted in wave of spear phishing emails potentially launched by a Russian hacker group, researchers with the cyber security firm FireEye [FEYE] say in a new blog post.

FireEye detected the spear phishing on Nov. 20, saying the activity is the same as a previous targeted phishing campaign by APT29, also known as Cozy Bear, but attribution is pending. If it turns out that APT29 is the group behind the emails, it would be the first that has been detected in more than a year.

“Given the widespread nature of the targeting, organizations that have previously been targeted by APT29 should take note of this activity,” the Nov. 19 blog post says. “For network defenders, whether or not this activity was conducted by APT29 should be secondary to properly investigating the full scope of the intrusion, which is of critical importance if the elusive and deceptive APT29 operators indeed had access to your environment.”

FireEye says that it detected the spear phishing activity on more than 20 of its clients in multiple industries.

The attack is being made to look like a secure communication from a public affairs official at the U.S. State Department with the emails being launched apparently from a compromised email provider for a hospital and a consulting company.

FireEye says that the markers that indicate APT29 may be behind the attack include “the resources invested in the phishing email and network infrastructure, the metadata from the weaponized shortcut file payload, and the specific individuals and organizations targeted.” These characteristics are the same as a previous phishing campaign by APT29 that began in November 2016, it says.

A new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report found that since FY 2008 the Navy has spent over $1.5 billion on 14 attack submarines sitting idle waiting to enter a shipyard for maintenance and those delayed n finishing maintenance. At the same time, those submarines also spent a total combined 61 months sitting idle waiting to even enter the shipyards for maintenance.

The GAO report, released Monday, resulted from a congressional direction to review the readiness of the Navy’s attack submarine fleet. A classified version of the report was issued Oct. 31.

“Idle time incurred while waiting to begin a maintenance period is often coupled with maintenance delays while at the shipyards, thus compounding total delays,” the report said.

The report found the Navy incurs “significant costs” in supporting and operating submarines dealing with idle time and maintenance delays. The $1.5 billion figure was derived from crewing, maintaining, and supporting attack submarines that were delayed getting in and out of the yards using historical daily cost data the Navy adjusted for inflation.

The GAO explained while the Navy would have incurred these costs even if the vessels were deployed, it incurred the $1.5 billion “for attack submarines without receiving any operational capability in return.”

Although the Navy argued it could still get some benefits from the operating and support costs since the crews could still conduct some limited training, GAO said costs like crew salaries, buying spare parts, and conducting maintenance “do not represent the full operational impact incurred by the Navy from the idle time and maintenance delays.”

The report noted the Los Angeles-class USS Boise (SSN-764) is the poster child of submarine delays. Although the Navy originally scheduled the Boise to enter the Norfolk Naval Shipyard for extended maintenance in 2013, due to a heavy workload repairs has been delayed through today. In June 2016 the submarine’s certification for normal operations expired, pulling it out of service. It has remained idle and pier-side at Nofolk Naval Station for over two years while waiting to enter a shipyard.

After Congress called for action on the Boise in 2017, the Navy awarded a contract to HII-NSS for SSN-764 depot maintenance in FY 2018 (Defense Daily, Oct. 20, 2017).

The GAO said by Oct. 1, the first day work could have started, the submarine will have been idling for 852 days since 2016. However, due to the time needed to prepare for a major maintenance period, the work is not expected to start until January 2019, leading to 960 days total of idle time.

SSN-764 arrived at HII-NNS in June and the total work is expected to take 25 months, until 2021 (Defense Daily, June 22).

GAO noted the Navy has started to address the public shipyard workforce and facilities needs and challenges, but “it has not effectively allocated maintenance periods among public shipyards and private shipyards that may also be available to help minimize attack submarine idle time.”

The office said its analysis found even while public shipyards have been operating above capacity for several years submarine maintenance delays are still getting longer and idle time is increasing. Moreover, it said the Navy expects backlogs to continue.

GAO estimated that the Navy will incur a further $266 million in operation and supporting costs in FY 2018 dollars for idle submarines in FY 2018 – 2023.

The public shipyards have increased full-time civilian employees from 25,000 in 2007 to over 34,000 in 2017 and aims for 36,100 by 2020. However, Navy officials noted the new workers are mostly inexperienced and will take time for full proficiency.

In February the Navy released its shipyard optimization plan, outlining $21 billion in needed investment to address shipyard facility and equipment needs over 20 years to meet operational needs of the current fleet. However, the GAO pointed out this plan does not cover the needs of the planned larger fleet heading to a goal of 355 ships.

The report argued the Navy may be able to mitigate this by using private shipyard capacity for the repaid work, but the Navy has not completed a comprehensive business case analysis to inform maintenance workload allocations across public and private yards, as recommended by DoD guidelines. GAO said officials from GD and HII-NNS told the office they each have available capacity for repair work for at least the next five years.

While the Navy has shifted eight million man-hours of attack submarine maintenance to the private yards in the past five years, this was done sporadically and sometimes after lengthy idle times. The private shipyard officials told GAO the sporadic shifts in the workload “have resulted in repair workload gaps that have disrupted private shipyard workforce, performance, and capital investment—creating costs that are ultimately borne in part by the Navy.

In early 2017 a Navy official said the service planned to continue relying on private shipyards for scheduled submarine maintenance periods. By that time the Navy had conducted six maintenance availabilities since 2012 at the two private yards.

Vice Adm. Joseph Mulloy, then-deputy chief of naval operations for integration of capabilities and resources, said at the time it often takes public shipyards too long to finish the attack submarine work because ballistic missile submarines and aircraft carriers are considered higher priorities (Defense Daily, March 16, 2017).

The report’s main recommendations is the Secretary of the Navy should ensure the Chief of Naval Operations conducts a business case analysis to inform this maintenance workload allocation.

It said the analysis should cover an assessment of private shipyard capacity to perform attack submarine maintenance, incorporate an accounting of the costs and risk associated with the submarines sitting idle, and account for qualitative benefits related to both mitigating risk in new submarine construction and providing additional availability to combatant commanders.

Belgium's government has approved the start of negotiations for the purchase of the GeneralAtomics Aeronautical Systems (GA-ASI) MQ-9B SkyGaurdian.

As it is a foreign military sale from California-based General Atomics, the Belgian and U.S. governments must negotiate terms under which the sale will take place.

The MQ-9B is the newest version of GA-ASI's MQ-9 Reaper, or Predator B drone, available in both a baseline variation and a maritime surveillance variation, dubbed the SeaGuardian. The new version was updated to meet NATO standardized agreement 4671 airworthiness requirements, which state the aircraft must have sense-and-avoid capabilities.

It also features SATCOM-controlled automated takeoff and landing and a high-definition electro-optical/infra-red full-motion video sensor. The remote-piloted aircraft, a medium-altitude, long-endurance UAS, can fly for more than 40 hours and in July made the first transatlantic flight by such an aircraft.

"We look forward to providing our unmanned aircraft systems to meet Belgium’s mission requirements, while also supporting the NATO Alliance,” said GA-ASI CEO Linden Blue. “We are also eager to work with our industrial partners in Belgium on a host of activities ranging from manufacturing to maintenance.”

Outside of Belgium, MQ-9s and other General Atomics drones are in use by a host of other countries including Spain, Italy, India and the U.K., where the Royal Air Force recently selected the SkyGuardian for its Protector program. Just last week, Australia also selected GA-ASI for its unmanned fleet, though it hasn't yet decided which version of the drone it will purchase. That country's defense minister said Australia will request pricing and availability information on the different variants.

Program Hubs Update

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